The Hunt for 928or: Has Anyone Seen This Spy Plane?
by Tom Mahood

928 on the runway at Groom Lake

This is the tale of a little endeavor that got out of hand. It chronicles the (mis)adventures in my 2+ year search for the crash site of a spy plane that went down 30 years ago as it was returning to Groom Lake.

Why would someone want to hunt for something like that? Isn't it a little strange? Certainly is, but it seemed like an easy, fun thing to do at the time. Of course, there's also the Groom connection, which adds a little spice into things. But beyond that I had the idea that it was sort of a good "test". Here was something that was documented to have existed and crashed, somewhere on public land. It was a real event. If I couldn't find something with these sterling qualifications, then I would most assuredly be wasting my time hunting for things of questionable existence like "secret bases" and saucers. But probably the best reason was that it was a good excuse to hang in the desert.

"Ah ha", some of you may be thinking. "I'll just read this, find out where the A-12 is, and head out there and add to my titanium collection". Now really, do ah seem that stooopid? I'm NOT going to tell you where the thing is. This insidious aircraft has eluded some of the best wreck hunters around. However, I will outline the process by which I found it, and if you want to be foolish enough to invest the time and money, you can find it too. I'll also relate the numerous deadends I encountered, and you'll get a good idea of where it's not (which is way more info than I had when I started this foolishness!). I did find three other crash sites in the general area and have given approximate directions to those sites (nice guy, eh?). I could just give the precise GPS coordinates, but there seems to be a certain segment of the wreckchasing community that is prone to strip sites bare. I'd prefer to make things a little difficult for these folks. My apologies to the rest of you.
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One note of warning: In a departure from my usual "separate photos" format, I've chose to imbed a number of images into the narrative, so loading could take a while. Tough.

Note: After the long overdue arrival of 928's crash report from the CIA in June of 1999, I rewote the Prologue to more accruately portray the events, and added an Epilogue to this epic tale which contains the crash report.